Scientist Claims A ‘Humanzee’ Was Born In US Lab Before It Was Killed By Doctors In 1920s

A renowned scientist from the United States says that back in the 20s, researchers in Florida were able to breed human with chimps and make a hybrid called a humanzee.

Gordon G. Gallup, an evolutionary psychologist well known for his contribution in the self-recognition experiments with animals, states that one of his university’s professor told him that a hybrid creature was born at the laboratory where he once used to work.

“One of the most interesting cases involved an attempt which was made back in the 1920s in what was the first primate research centre established in the US in Orange Park, Florida,” says Gallup in an interview with the Sun. “They inseminated a female chimpanzee with human semen from an undisclosed donor and claimed not only that pregnancy occurred but the pregnancy went full term and resulted in a live birth.”

Gallup, who now teaches at the University of Albany, says that those people knew the significance of this experiment and its research. But the ethics and the moral of meddling with mother nature haunted the scientists and they killed the creature.

“But in the matter of days or a few weeks, they began to consider the moral and ethical considerations and the infant ‘were’ euthanized,” says Gallup adding that his professor used to work in Yerkes before the band was moved to Emory University in Atlanta in 1930. “He told me the rumour was true. And he was a credible scientist in his own right.”

Even though the claims of Gallup look accurate, there are fragments in his story that lead up to a cloudy picture.

First of all, the place where these experiments were conducted is now called Yerkes National Primate Research Center or YNPRC, which is a part of Emory University and was created in 1930 and not in the 1920s.

The founder of this institution was psychologist Robert Yerkes, a well known figure in the scientific community and shared heavy interest in eugenics and had an incline towards the behavior of primates.

However, before it was called YNPRC, the laboratory was called Yale Laboratories of Primate Biology, and that is what Gallup may be referring to.

Gallup does not identify the scientist who told him about the human and animal hybrid. However, in an article published by the Florida Times Union, Gallup stated that a well-known person was there to witness this event; though, he later retracted his claim.

“I didn’t say that happened,” reports the Florida Times Union. “I said there is a persistent rumor it happened.”

Sadly, we may never know if Gallup’s claims are accurate or not but we do know that attempts for creating a humanzee by others were not up to par and have failed over the years.